September 23, 1995

Hospital Official Resigns The chairman of the department of anesthesia at Long Island Jewish Medical Center has resigned in the midst of a state investigation that followed three patient deaths and several injuries this spring. Page 25. Balkan Foes Prepare to Talk Much of Bosnia seemed to be settling into tense expectation yesterday as the fighting became more subdued and the warring parties maneuvered for position before talks scheduled for Tuesday in New York. Page 4. In Pursuit of the Presidency The publishing executive Malcolm S. Forbes Jr. formally began his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination yesterday, promising lower taxes to free the economy from "political repression." Page 10.

Breaking his long silence, O. J. Simpson rose today to explain his failure to testify, and to reiterate his innocence, his faith in the jury and his love for his family. Then both sides in the Simpson trial rested, and Judge Lance A. Ito laid out the law to jurors who will soon decide the defendant's fate. In a gesture that left prosecutors and the father of one victim literally trembling with rage, Mr. Simpson turned a routine waiver of his right to testify into a mini-oration before the jury entered the room. Aside from an occasional "Yes, your Honor" and one "too tight," it was his first public statement in months. For all its seeming spontaneity, one member of the defense conceded that it was two weeks in the works.

Since January, the Democrats have been out of power in Congress. Today, they showed just how far out of it they are. They staged a hearing on the front lawn of the Capitol to demonstrate explicitly how the Republicans are shutting them out of one of the biggest undertakings of the new majority -- revamping Medicare, the nation's health-care system for the elderly.

Capping a week of major legislative developments that have astonished this usually blase capital, the Republicans who seized control of Capitol Hill last November pressed ahead today with further plans to dismantle Federal medical aid for the poor and radically reshape Federal medical aid for the elderly. Today's events in Washington, which came on the heels of the Senate's vote early this week to abandon the 60-year tradition of Federal assistance to all poor children, compounded an atmosphere of change so tumultuous as to verge on revolution. Perhaps not since the Hundred Days at the start of the New Deal, to which many of the programs now under attack can trace their origins, has Congress moved with such speed on so many fronts.

Ending a tumultuous five-week courtship, Time Warner Inc. and Turner Broadcasting System said yesterday that they would merge their sprawling operations, reinforcing Time Warner's position as the world's largest communications company. Time Warner said it would buy the 82 percent of Turner it did not already own in a stock deal worth roughly $7.5 billion. Ted Turner, the maverick founder of the Cable News Network and the chairman of Turner Broadcasting, is to become vice chairman of Time Warner.